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Cross-Cultural Business Etiquette - Communication Skills Training From MindTools.com. Learning the Ins and Outs of Global Business Success – in an international environment. © iStockphoto Imagine this: You walk into your local Wal-Mart and see a pool filled with live turtles, cages of live chickens, and an aquarium with live fish. Are you in the pet department? No, you're in the grocery section – these animals are for your dinner! In Western culture, this would be shocking. You might even see protests, or consumer outrage. So, Wal-Mart's solution for the East was the complete opposite of what they do in the West. International Differences This is one example of just how different our cultures can be. Are you about to do business in another country? It's important to realize that the following tips are general directions only. Business Cultures When Easterners come to a Western country (like the United Kingdom or the United States) for the first time, they might be shocked at... ... for the complete article: Mind Tools Club members, click here.

Join now for just $1, first month. Avoiding Cross-Cultural Faux Pas: Food - Team Management Training From MindTools.com. Making the Best Impression Should you take the first slice? © iStockphoto/bocaminus Jack's boss has asked him to visit the organization's new office in China. He's excited about the opportunity, and is looking forward to getting to know his Chinese co-workers. When he arrives, his Chinese host Ju-long arranges a welcome banquet in his honor. He walks into the restaurant "fashionably late," only to discover that, as the guest of honor, he was expected to be there early. As everyone sits down, he starts talking about business and takes a bite from each dish as soon as it's served, much to Ju-long's dismay. Jack can tell that he's made a poor impression with his Chinese co-workers, but he's not sure why.

Every culture has different values, expectations and social norms, particularly around food, and Jack could have made a much better impression if he'd taken time to understand them. The Importance of Cultural Awareness Differences to Consider Common Cross-Cultural Differences Note: Key Points. QBE. Tips on how to write a letter of complaint. Language learning can increase brain size! Researchers compared MRI scans of students’ brains before and after three months of intensive language study at a Swedish Military Interpreter Academy. Results showed that the hippocampus, involved in learning new information and in spatial navigation, as well as three areas in the cerebral cortex related to language and learning, grew in size.

The before-and-after images of the language students were also compared with those of university students studying medicine or cognitive sciences intensively. “Even if we cannot compare three months of intensive language study with a lifetime of being bilingual, there is a lot to suggest that learning languages is a good way to keep the brain in shape,” researcher Johan Mårtensson remarks.

Have you worked out your brain today? Go on, exercise your mental muscles with Voxy! Esther Liu Esther is a Pedagogy & Curriculum Fall Associate. (Visited 1,600 times, 6 visits today)

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Writing teaching resources. 10 tips for coping with international business travel. Traveling to other countries on business can get a little tricky. Here's some hard-won advice from one globetrotting IT pro. I have always had a passion for travel and I have been fortunate to be able to see a good bit of the world. Between business travel and personal travel, I have visited more than 60 countries. One thing I have learned through my travels is that some places can be very different from what you might be used to.

These differences can sometimes make business travel challenging. This article lists 10 pointers to help make your international travels go more smoothly. 1: Make sure you have the proper voltage adapter Lesson number one is that not all voltage adapters are created equal. There's more to choosing a voltage adapter than just looking for the right type of plug. 2: Play nice with customs agents Be nice to customs agents, even when you don't think that they deserve it. Admittedly, sometimes it can be hard to bite your tongue. 3: Get some rest before you go. Business-English: Deutsche sprechen schlecht Englisch | Karriere.

Nur 2,1 Prozent der Arbeitnehmer sprechen verhandlungssicher Englisch, ergab eine Studie. Aus Scham schicken viele ihre Kollegen vor und kommen so weiter aus der Übung. Speichern Drucken Twitter Facebook Google + Die Mehrheit der Arbeitnehmer in Deutschland spricht nur mangelhaft Englisch. 65,5 Prozent der Beschäftigten geben an, nur über geringe Kenntnisse zu verfügen. Bei den Arbeitnehmern im Alter zwischen 30 und 49 Jahren sind die Kenntnisse weniger gut als bei den Jüngeren: Von den Berufstätigen über 30 gab fast jeder Dritte an, nur schlecht Englisch zu sprechen. Anzeige Besser schätzen sich die 20- bis 29-Jährigen ein: Über 54 Prozent der Befragten dieser Altersgruppe bewerteten ihre Englischkenntnisse als gut bis exzellent. Natürlich ist auch der Bildungsabschluss bei den Fremdsprachenkenntnissen zu berücksichtigen: Akademiker, Fach- und Führungskräfte verfügen über ein höheres Sprachniveau. Unternehmen investieren in Sprachkurse für Mitarbeiter.

Quiz: Meistern Sie eine Geschäftsreise ins Ausland? | Karriere. Immigration and language: Stolz, Amerikaner zu sein. English Language & Usage Stack Exchange. What is EBITDA? - hofmannalbrecht - Gmail. Science & Environment - A better way to learn Chinese? There’s been a rising dissatisfaction with current language teaching methods in China, but scientists think they may have an answer. There’s no way round it: learning Chinese is tough. As far as reading goes, what most dismays native speakers of alphabetic languages is that Chinese characters offer so few clues. With virtually no Spanish, I can figure out in the right context that baño means bath, but that word in Chinese (洗澡) seems to offer no clues about pronunciation, let alone meaning. There seems no alternative, then, but to slavishly learn the 3,500 or so characters that account for at least 99% of use in written Chinese.

This is hard even for native Chinese speakers, usually demanding endless rote copying in school. Is there a better way? Chinese characters aren’t really as arbitrary and bewilderingly diverse as they might seem. These connections help with learning the language. Character building Of course, the ultimate test is whether students do actually learn faster. Duden-Newsletter: der neue Duden ist da! - hofmannalbrecht - Gmail. What is affirmative action. What is collateral.

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What is Debt. KS3 Bitesize - English. What is amortization? - hofmannalbrecht - Gmail. Useful Communication Tools to Foster Common Understanding. As a manager of a business, your employees will not be same page as you 100% of the time. No matter how hard you try to build a cohesive workforce in meetings, there will always be miscommunication. We are repeatedly told that the key to successful management is fluid and frequent communication. However, most of us fail in this regard, closing off channels of negative feedback in favor of positive ones – hearing only what we want to hear.

A broken communication system results in high employee turnover rates, poor time management and inefficient management. Meetings All businesses have meetings, but not all are effective ones. If your meeting is a gathering of unfamiliar employees from different divisions, hold ice breaker activities to help them socialize with one another. Rotate Work Responsibilities An easy way to make this work is to keep a list of employees and categorize them by familiarity. Using Social Media Many workplaces now utilize Facebook to organize their employees.

Ways to research a company before an interview. May 15, 2013, 4:17 AM PDT Takeaway: When you’re preparing for an interview, it’s always a good idea (and will make you more comfortable) if you do some research on the company beforehand. Here’s how to get the dirt. When you’re preparing for an interview, it’s always a good idea (and will make you more comfortable) if you do some research on the company beforehand.

Go to the company’s website and see what you can find out about its mission and history. If you want information that wouldn’t necessarily show up on the official website, try these sites: Glassdoor – a database of anonymously posted information about salaries, interviews, and jobs. Automatically sign up for our Career Management newsletter! For public companies, you can get a snapshot of financials through their required filings with the U.S. In the process of researching a company, you may find some information that will make you leery.

What Our Words Tell Us. About two years ago, the folks at Google released a database of 5.2 million books published between 1500 and 2008. You can type a search word into the database and find out how frequently different words were used at different epochs. The database doesn’t tell you how the words were used; it just tells you how frequently they were used. Still, results can reveal interesting cultural shifts. For example, somebody typed the word “cocaine” into the search engine and found that the word was surprisingly common in the Victorian era. Then it gradually declined during the 20th century until around 1970, when usage skyrocketed. I’d like to tell a story about the last half-century, based on studies done with this search engine. The first element in this story is rising individualism. That is to say, over those 48 years, words and phrases like “personalized,” “self,” “standout,” “unique,” “I come first” and “I can do it myself” were used more frequently.

Photo. Before You Buy That T-Shirt. Beawiharta/Reuters Workers making clothes at a factory in Jakarta, Indonesia. Unfortunately, there are few good answers. A boycott of goods from Bangladesh would probably be counterproductive. It could deprive some of the poorest workers of jobs and income that provide a step up from farming or manual labor. Recent attempts by groups like Fair Trade USA to provide certification for sweatshop-free clothing have gained little traction with retailers or consumers. Research shows that some American shoppers would prefer and pay more for clothes from factories that don’t exploit workers. Large companies have multilayered supply chains that they change all the time to keep costs low. What can a consumer do when a retailer claims to be in the dark? Mr. That may sound hopelessly idealistic and, at least in the short term, would not necessarily help Bangladeshi workers.

Still, outraged shoppers have successfully pressured companies in the past. Is the traditional resume about to be outdated? Since the way employers look for candidates is changing--with sites like LinkedIn and movements into Big Data, are traditional resumes a thing of the past? Although IT pros make their livings from technological innovation, you have to admit that it has also disrupted employment in different industries many times over. From travel agents to telecommunications, it has cut out the middlemen in numerous fields and has eliminated some of the most traditional forms of communication. With the progress of Big Data, some are predicting the demise of the traditional resume. But are these predictions going to come to fruition, or will the age-old resume format survive despite technological progress? Here are my thoughts. LinkedIn Many have trumpeted LinkedIn as the biggest challenger to the traditional resume. Big Data Companies like TalentBin and Gild use analytics to scour the web for appropriate candidates for jobs and recommend them to employers.

How to prepare your resume for the machine age. Dying for the shirt on your back. The deaths of more than 600 garment workers in Bangladesh's Rana Plaza factory collapse April 24 is a tragedy that highlights widespread problems in the global apparel industry. But will it be the spark that finally leads to much-needed global reforms? After disasters like Rana, or the fire at another Bangladeshi garment factory in November that killed 112 people, there is a tendency to play detective, to focus on the culprit, whether it be the owner, corruption or lax laws and missing enforcement. News article after news article focuses on finding the smoking gun, as if there were only one cause and as if minus that cause, those workers would be safe today. Or coverage treats these tragedies as natural disasters with a rush of charity before public attention turns to the next event. Yes, we seek justice.

According to Boston College sociology professor Juliet Schor, the cost of apparel in real dollars has fallen 39% since 1994. Rana should be our global Triangle fire moment. Richard A. Englischsprachige Geschäftskorrespondenz ist einfacher als Sie denken. Englisch-Basis-Wissen reicht heute schon lange nicht mehr aus - im Büro müssen Sie einfach absolut fit in Englisch sein. Jetzt gibt es für Sie eine bequeme Lösung: Office English Today Denn heute muss niemand mehr all die internationalen Korrespondenzregeln locker aus dem Ärmel schütteln können. Man muss nur wissen, wo man sie findet. Egal ob Sie als Sekretärin Termine für Ihren Chef vereinbaren müssen, als Einzelhandelskauffrau eine Anfrage auf Englisch schreiben müssen oder als Exportsachbearbeiter Ihren Kunden über eine Lieferverzögerung informieren müssen: In Office English Today finden Sie den passenden Musterbrief oder die passende Musterformulierung. Und lernen ganz nebenbei noch relevante Vokabeln.

So sparen Sie jede Menge Zeit. Tappen Sie nicht länger unbemerkt in peinliche Englisch-Fettnäpfchen Testen Sie jetzt Office English Today und begeistern Sie weltweit mit den besten englischen Geschäftsbriefen – in British und American English – und sicherem Smalltalk. How to Climb Into a Truck Cab. Grammar rules everyone should follow. The Idler Academy's inaugural Bad Grammar award was bestowed last week on 100 academics who wrote an open letter to Michael Gove in March criticising the education secretary's revised national curriculum. The letter reads at times as if it was written by committee, but does it really display "the worst use of English over the last 12 months by people who should know better"? Hardly. Like many such gongs, up to and including the Nobel prize for literature, the Bad Grammar award looks suspiciously like the continuation of politics by other means.

One of the three judges was Toby Young, whose latest book is How to Set Up a Free School; Gove apparently told fellow guests at a Spectator party last year that he'd like Young to stand as a Tory MP. 1. 2. "Which is appropriate to non-defining and that to defining clauses," HW Fowler wrote in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926). 3. 4. Whom is on the way out, and won't be much missed. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Home. Online educational program. 2013 Teachers Back to School Survival Guide. The Average Income of a Pastor of a Mega Church. In a report by the Leadership Network in 2010, the average salaries of pastors at 253 mega churches in 38 states and four Canadian provinces were reported. A lead pastor in a mega church can earn an average salary of $147,000 according to an article on the report by the website Christian Post. However, the salary range for lead pastors can be from $40,000 to $400,000.

Executive pastors at mega churches earn an average salary of $99,000 a year. The salaries reported in the survey do not include the value of benefits, but it did include housing allowances. “Yours faithfully” or “Yours sincerely”? Business Advantage activities – Intermediate. Inspiring Women. Advantages and Disadvantages of Protectionism | Aleconomics's Blog. Ten Key Ideas, Opening the Door to the Economic Way of Thinking, by Russell Roberts. Free Trade. Online Test. Principles of Plain English. Writing. James Abela ELT. Take a photo and.... | The eltpics ideas site for teachers. BigHugeLabs: Do fun stuff with your photos. Word Clouds for Kids! Tagul - Gorgeous tag clouds. WordItOut - Generate word clouds (and make custom gifts) Create a PicLit.

Take a photo and.... | The eltpics ideas site for teachers. Eltpics' Photostream. ProjectBritain.com - A resource of British Life and Culture in the UK by Woodlands Junior. Eurocatering Language Training. Active Learning | Infusion Level | Language Arts. Sprachschuleulm.de. Your question of the week from Vocabulary.com - hofmannalbrecht - Gmail. Apprendre l’anglais. learn english for beginners A1 A2 B1.

A day in my life. Video lessons - Most Popular. BBC - Homepage. Global Text Project. Tagxedo - Word Cloud with Styles. Tagul - Gorgeous tag clouds. WordItOut - Generate word clouds (and make custom gifts) TagCrowd: make your own tag cloud from any text. 14 Infographics to Help Organize Your Kitchen. Tagxedo - Word Cloud with Styles. NTDOEScratch. Learning, networks, knowledge, technology, community. Gardner Writes. English | Learn about Types of Writing. Corwin: More Than 100 Brain-Friendly Tools and Strategies for Literacy Instruction: Kathy Perez: 9781412926935.